Google today launched the Google Talk instant messaging service that doubles as a means to make free phone calls over the Internet. Google Talk is currently in beta testing mode and to sign up you’ll need to have a Gmail account, because the two are tightly integrated. For starters, the login will be the same for both. The Gmail interface is accessible from within Google Talk, the IM service will alert users when new e-mails arrive, and Gmail contacts will be automatically loaded into Google Talk. The new service is bound to help the company compete with portals AOL, MSN, Skype and Yahoo. Skype, for its part, this morning said that it is opening its service to third-parties. The Times online explains how to get talking with Google, while Search Engine Watch says Google Talk lacks the “wow factor” Google has pulled off with Google Maps and Gmail. Google Talk, some people are saying, will do more than merely add a new service to the company’s quiver. “At a high level, this indicates that, whether it likes it or not, Google is officially a Web portal and a media company,” said Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst, in Google to launch instant messaging service by IDG News Service correspondent Juan Carlos Perez. Gary Rivlin of The New York Times writes in Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villian about how Google has transformed itself from upstart underdog to a big company doing things people didn’t expect including gaining resentment and now being seen as arrogant in its treatment of existing and prospective partners. Rivlin cites an interview in which Gates said Google is “more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with.” When used in relation to software, the term ‘Evil Empire’ is most associated with Microsoft, but is Google primed for a nefarious moniker of its own? Technology Industry